


We Are Who We Are (But We Don't Have To Be)

by unwhithered



Category: Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Echo Lives, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, post-The Wrong Jedi AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-12
Updated: 2019-02-12
Packaged: 2019-10-27 02:06:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17757746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unwhithered/pseuds/unwhithered
Summary: Echo dreams of death and glowing yellow eyes. As it turns out, it's Ahsoka's dream he's sharing. In the aftermath they take comfort in each other. (The beginning is stolen from my longfic New Age and expanded on with the shippy porn that doesn't belong in that fic.)Tagged underage b/c Ahsoka is 17 and the clones are...complicated.





	We Are Who We Are (But We Don't Have To Be)

**Author's Note:**

> There will never be porn or explicit shipping in New Age, but I've finally gotten up the confidence to post this shippy "missing scene." I will someday tie together all of the half-chapters I've written for New Age lately and actually post them, but for now there's this.

Echo stands in a swirling red fog bank. He can taste metal on the back of his tongue, the flavor of old blood that lingers after a battle, and when the wind changes it brings with it the stench of decaying flesh. Fear prickles along his skin, though he isn’t sure why - the aftermath of a battle is as familiar to him as the inside of a Grand Army ship. For some reason he has the creeping feeling that this is different.

He steps forward, unable to even see the terrain beneath his boots, and winces when bone cracks under his right foot. The fog thins, allowing him a glimpse of a shadowed shape. A woman, he thinks, and a sense of familiarity nags at the back of his mind, but when he tries to move toward her the fog closes again and leaves him searching blindly. He doesn’t dare call out in case the enemy is still in the area - in case she is the enemy.

Instead he picks his way carefully through the foggy landscape, doing his best to move in a straight line despite the lack of a light source or any visible landmarks to orient himself by. His boots slip in puddles it’s best not to think about, and the fog absorbs the cracks and pops of crushed bone and cartilage. Every so often he thinks he sees something moving in the fog, and with it comes the unnerving feeling that he’s being stalked by someone or something. He doesn’t like the feel of being prey.

After what may be hours, or perhaps only minutes - Echo’s usually impeccable internal clock is failing him in this deathly still and silent landscape - the fog seems to clear in the distance once more. Echo picks up his pace, determined to reach the clearer spot and find some clue to where he might be. It’s a mistake. A steep slope drops away in front of him, which he only realizes after he has already stepped off of it. Gravity does the rest.

Biting back a surprised shout, Echo curls into a defensive ball as he rolls down a seemingly endless hill. By the time he reaches the bottom he has what feels like a hundred bruises, capped off by a sharp whack on the head as he bounces to a stop atop something bulky and hard. When he uncurls enough to see what it is he immediately regrets it.

Fives’ glassy eyes stare back at him, blank in death. His head is several inches from his armored body, and the wound that separated it is clean and bloodless. In fact, it looks cauterized. Lightsaber, Echo thinks, his stomach threatening to rebel. The woman in the distance must have been Ventress, the evil bitch. She could have at least given them the courtesy of letting them die together, as Echo knows they should have.

He pauses only long enough to close Fives’ eyes before pushing back to his feet with only one goal in mind: find her, kill her. Avenge Fives and all the brothers who fell with him.

As if it can sense his intentions, a breeze clears a path in front of him, Now Echo can see that the bodies he has been climbing over are all vod’e - and all in 501st blue. He doesn’t dare look too hard at the helmets, doesn’t know if he can cope with seeing Rex or Jesse or Kix among the fallen. When he sees the tall, thin shape of a woman in the distance he puts them out of his mind entirely, consumed by the pursuit. His luck holds and the path ahead remains clear.

The closer he gets, the clearer the air - and the less his target looks like Ventress. Has Dooku found some new apprentice they don’t know about? Her dual red sabers mean she’s no friend of his regardless, even if she wasn’t standing alone in the middle of a killing field.

When he’s twenty yards away he reaches for the blaster hanging heavy on his hip, only to find nothing but cloth where he expects weapon and armor. It was there only a minute ago, he’s sure - remembers it digging into his stomach while he was falling, and bouncing against his hip as he broke into a jog after his target. He swallows hard as his fingers flex around empty air. Considers retreating to scavenge a weapon off one of the fallen - too late.

She’s turning, raising her head and straightening to her full height. Yellow-orange eyes meet his from a face so familiar it nearly stops his heart.

“Ahsoka--”

A red lightsaber buzzes as it swings through the air toward him, and he doesn’t even raise his arm to shield himself, knows it won’t do any good. If she wants to kill him, this woman he would lay down his life for, there’s nothing he can do to stop her short of finding some way to kill her himself. And he won’t do that.

\----------

Echo wakes with a shout, bolting upright in bed. He reaches for his throat, sure that the last thing he felt was his neck being sliced into by a lightsaber, but finds only the usual scarred skin beneath his fingertips. That doesn’t make sense - he was sure - he knew he was dying--

He looks around. The room is dark, but a warm body is pressed up against his side, and he would recognize the snoring coming from across the room anywhere. Fives is alive. Ahsoka didn’t kill him. And when Echo touches the person lying next to him, he feels skin too cool to be human, and a ropy scar curving over prominent ribs.

Ahsoka flinches beneath his touch, letting out a pained whimper and rolling away - or trying to. Echo catches her around the middle and pulls her back, shaking her awake too roughly and turning her toward him, watching intently as her eyes open.

Blue.

501st blue, the most beautiful color he has ever seen. He lets out a sigh of relief. At the same moment, she screams.

On instinct, Echo clamps his hand over her mouth to muffle the sound. Once that was the only way to protect batchmates from being punished if their nightmares were discovered by the Kaminoans. Ahsoka’s teeth are much sharper than theirs were, and when she bites down on the heel of his hand he feels blood begin to trickle down his wrist.

“Kriff,” he growls under his breath. “Udesii, Ahsoka, it’s just me. Echo. Your Echo, So’ika.”

She doesn’t stop fighting, pushing at his arms and biting down harder, but he doesn’t let go. Just changes his grip, keeps one hand clamped over her mouth and uses his good arm to haul her out of bed. She’s heavier than she used to be, yes, but still light enough to carry the few steps to the door and into the small office on the other side. All the while he talks to her, struggling to keep his voice even when his heart is still racing and his chest is heaving with panic. His only consolation is that the ball of terror and anger in his arms is far from the cold faced woman in his dreams.

Her eyes are blue, he reminds himself. Her eyes are blue.

They make it as far as the desk, where he dumps her on top of a stack of papers and a handful of mechanical odds and ends. When she doesn’t immediately try to bolt he sits heavily in the desk chair, staring at her in the dim glow of the motion sensitive lights.

She stares back. Blood - his blood - coats her lips and runs down her chin, and her pupils are blown so wide that only a thin ring of blue shines around them. He doesn’t care, as long as they aren’t yellow. He can’t shake the image of red lightsabers and yellow eyes. He has a feeling it will haunt him in the days to come.

“You’re not dead.”

“No, I’m not,” he agrees. His breathing is still ragged and fast, his voice rough and deep from sleep. “Much to my surprise.”

“I dreamed I killed you,” she whispers, pressing her lips into a thin line.

“I dreamed I died. You used a red lightsaber to behead me.”

“Oh.” Tears well up in her eyes and spill over slowly, rolling down her almost gaunt cheeks. She’s been growing fast and not eating enough despite Rex stuffing extra ration bars into her belt pouches and Fives sneaking second helpings of desert for them and the girls. “Am I...am I becoming a monster, Echo?”

“No,” he replies, with more conviction than he really has. Even if she does, it doesn’t matter - he’ll follow her to the gates of hell and beyond. But he can’t tell her that. “Not if I can help it.”

“Y-you have to promise,” she says, her voice wobbling and her tears coming faster. “Promise me you won’t let me hurt any of the men. You can’t ever let me do that. I’d rather die than hurt you.”

Echo surges to his feet, ignoring the protest of his bad leg, and pulls her into his arms again. She goes willingly, hiding her face against his bare chest while he rubs circles on her back. “I promise, cyar’ika,” he murmurs against her montrals, “I promise. But I won’t have to. It was just a nightmare. We all have them.”

Ahsoka shakes her head. “I’ve never had one like that before. I’ve dreamed I watched you die - at the Citadel, on Christophsis, in a dozen other hellholes. After Umbara I - I picked up the men’s dreams, I was a bystander to the carnage and I couldn’t do anything to change it, to save any of you. I saw Fives in front of the firing squad, I stood beside the men meant to kill him. But I’ve never,” she hiccups, “never dreamed I was the one holding the weapon.”

Mouth dry and heart racing, Echo breaks the unspoken promise shared by all clone troopers to never speak of their dreams to the jetiise. “I’ve dreamed it,” he whispers, as if he’s back in the barracks comparing nightmares with his brothers in hushed tones. “I’ve dreamt of killing you. Of shooting Skywalker in the back. Of turning on you both in the middle of battle and cutting you down. We all have - all of the clones, for as long as anyone can remember, we’ve had nightmares about killing our jedi. Even before we’d ever met one.”

When he tries to step back, to give her space to process what he’s said or perhaps to puke up everything in his stomach, her arms slide around him and reel him back in. He shivers, his skin crawling with disgust at himself for betraying the confidence of his brothers and for having the dreams at all.

“You would never hurt me,” she says after a long, painful moment of silence. It’s the only thing she’s said with confidence all night, and kriff, he wants to believe her so badly his chest aches with it.

“Maybe not. But I’ve dreamt it all the same.”

Ahsoka shifts back enough to look up at him, her eyes wide and wet and her mouth still smeared with dried blood. She looks like a wild thing and still, somehow, the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen. He can’t resist the urge to wipe the tear tracks from her cheeks with his uninjured hand. Some of the tension drains from his shoulders when she tips her face into his hand, still so trusting even after his confession.

“Let’s make a pact.” She licks her lips, grimacing at the taste of blood and tears. “Let’s promise each other. We will never become the monsters in our nightmares.”

He nods his agreement, then realizes this is the sort of thing that requires more than that. “I promise you, Ahsoka, that I’ll never turn on you or Skywalker. And I promise I won’t let you harm any of our vode, either. We’ll never become the monsters we dream of.”

“Never,” she repeats. She sounds fragile but determined, and if he knows anything about Ahsoka, it’s that she keeps her promises. It might not fix anything - she might still fall, he might still turn on his jetiise one day - but he’ll sleep easier knowing they’ve made the pact.

He does his best to smile, touching her bottom lip with his thumb and wiping away some of his own blood. “It’s a blood pact.”

When Echo kisses her he tastes his own blood. Ahsoka shivers, and for a moment Echo is afraid she’ll pull away. Instead she throws her arms around his neck and opens her mouth to him, lets him kiss her with all the frantic energy of someone who just watched everything he loves die at his beloved’s hands only to wake and realize it was only a dream. The glow of red lightsabers in her hands is burned into his memory, will probably haunt him for the rest of his short life, but it was only a dream, and Ahsoka is warm and real under his hands.

His thumbs fit into the hollows above her hip bones, his fingertips nearly meeting when he spreads them across her lower back. He can feel the bumps of her spine with only a light brush. Kix is right, she needs to eat more. She’s grown six inches and shed the last of her baby fat since they fled the Republic, and hasn’t put on the weight to match. Always seeing to the men’s needs first, always training with Rex and Fives so that she can fight harder and save more lives on the battlefield. Echo often wonders when she’ll realize that she isn’t the pint sized padawan constantly striving to prove her worth anymore. She has nothing to prove to any of them - Echo isn’t the only one of his brothers who would follow her into the tombs of Korriban if she asked.

When her sharp nails bite into his scalp he grunts, pulls her closer to the edge of the desk and fits himself between her legs. Her head drops back, exposing the gorgeous arch of her throat, and he takes the invitation. The smooth skin beneath her jaw transitions to the uneven texture of burn scars near her collarbones, proof that even a jetii - former jetii - is not invincible.

Once upon a time, fresh off of Kamino, Echo believed they were.

Now he knows they bleed and scar and die like any man. Each of Ahsoka’s scars is burned into his memory as graphically as the brutal ones that cover the right half of his own body. He flexes his stiff, still bleeding right hand, and touches his scarred fingertips to the ropy mark that curves around her ribs and trails part way down her back. It had nearly killed her. Would have, if Togrutan anatomy was an exact match to humans. He remembers watching her crumple to the muddy ground, hearing Anakin roar in rage and anguish as he cut a path through the oncoming clankers to reach her, how Rex stood over her convulsing body and defended her even as he shouted for the rest of the company to fall back.

Good soldiers followed orders. Turned out, Echo had never been such a good soldier after all, even though he could still quote Grand Army regulations backward and forward. He had covered Rex while the Captain carried her over one shoulder, still shooting with his other hand, a sickening amount of blue blood running down his filthy armor.

He shivers, banishes the thought from his mind. The only blood spilled today has been his, streaks of it painting Ahsoka’s skin when he pulls her closer still. His fingers skim all of the skin left bare by what little clothing she wore to bed. Hers are cool against his chest, splayed over the tattoo of Rex’s handprint, then tracing lightly down his ribs and stomach until they reach the waistband of his shorts. She pauses there, teases the callused pads of her fingers along the thin skin between his hip bones and the trail of dark hair that disappears into his pants.

Echo’s breath hitches. There is so little privacy to be had, even now that they’re no longer subject to the Grand Army’s strict schedule and long campaigns with little shelter. It feels like an age since she last touched him like this, since he was last able to slide his hands beneath her ass and squeeze. For a moment he wonders if they should wake Fives and invite him to join them in their rare moment of privacy, but then Ahsoka has hooked her fingers into his shorts and sent them sliding to the floor, and all thoughts of leaving her for even a moment are gone.

His hips push forward restlessly, rubbing his cock against the smooth flesh and scrap of fabric where her hip and thigh meet. She’s still wearing too much clothing. He needs to feel her, all of her, to remind himself that she belongs to him just as he belongs to her, and as long as they have each other they will never become the monsters in their dreams. One step ahead of him as always, Ahsoka is already peeling off her thin top, tossing it aside carelessly so that she can wrap herself back around him. Echo muffles his curses against the swell of her breasts as he all but rips off her underwear, finally allowing him to rut against nothing but skin.

He would have her like this, on the desk where her Master reads his reports, but she has other plans. Stumbling beneath invisible pressure, he falls back into the oversized chair behind the desk. She follows, her movements almost predatory, hovering over him like a hunter stalking her prey before folding herself down into his lap. It only takes the barest shift of his hips to slide his cock against the wet heat of her cunt, only for it to disappear as she rises up onto her knees. A moment later his near-silent whine of protest turns into a groan as she seats herself on his cock, sinking down until her ass is flush with his lap and his entire length is buried inside of her.

“Ahsoka,” he breathes, worshipful. It has to hurt. Her hips are narrow, her Togrutan body not designed to accommodate the girth of human men, and she’s so tight around him that it’s almost painful, but that doesn’t even slow her tonight. She rides him hard, her nails gouging raw trails in his shoulders to match the marks his own leave on her hips and ass, and ignores every one of his attempts to slow their pace until Echo gives up. Let her take what she needs from him tonight - he’s happy to give it, whatever it may be.

When desperate little noises begin escaping her Echo ducks his head and takes one of her nipples into his mouth, sucking and nipping until it becomes a hard nub before switching to her other breast. Ahsoka pushes her fingers into his hair, scratching at his scalp as she tries to draw him closer. It’s impossible - there’s barely a spare inch between them - but he lets her try. He wants the same thing, after all - to be so close to her that even he can’t tell where one of them ends and the other begins, to hold her against him like this forever, where he can be sure that she is safe and whole. Where he can show her that she is loved, no matter what she dreams of, or what she does to protect Echo and his brothers.

“Echo,” she whimpers, her body shaking above and around him. “Echo, please, please…”

“Shhh, cyar’ika,” he speaks against her skin. His voice is barely more than a rumble between them, but he knows that she can hear it as well as she can hear his heartbeat and the blood rushing in his veins. Echo slips his left hand between them to rub her clit, hides his smile against her neck when she shudders and whines in response. “I’ve got you, my love. I’ve got you. Just let go.”

And she does, beautifully, the rhythm of her hips growing erratic just before she comes with a shout. Echo follows less than a minute later, his face buried in her shoulder as he curses his way through his orgasm. They don’t move for a long time after that, tangled together in a sweaty heap where anyone might walk in on them looking for Anakin or Ahsoka. Even at ship midnight, there’s always news for the commanding officers. Kriff it, Echo is beyond caring who might see them. Their affair is an open secret at best, and right now they need each other as much as he has ever needed anyone in this Sith damned galaxy.

**Author's Note:**

> I've half-migrated to dreamwidth from tumblr. Also as unwhithered there. Come talk to me about fic and the Clone Wars.


End file.
